Gloom for the book club

Hi everyone, CstM here. I hope you’re all doing well.
We’re having the Welsh Mothership visiting, so life has been a bit hectic. Especially after almost two years of no sleep over visitors. You do get a bit complacent in your solitude, don’t you?

So last month we were reading The Catcher in the Rye. Honestly, I absolutely hated it. I could just not get on with it and gave up after 4 chapters, which may be a bit unfair towards the book.
Maybe it was just not the right time to read it, or maybe it’s my aversion of first person character books, but yeah I’m happy to see that book gone.
I am a strange one about first person character perspective in books. In school we read this Steen Steensen Blicher story, Late awakening (Sildig opvaagen). It’s told in the first person perspective, about this guy who is in love with a woman, but the plot twist is that for most of the story we only see his version of events, and it turns out he has a very twisted perspective of reality. After that I’ve never trusted a character narrating in first person.
I tried reading Moby Dick, but I read the fist line of “Call me Ishmael” and I was just wondering why I’d spend some 400 pages with a guy who isn’t even upfront about his name. Like can I really trust anything you try to tell me about some whale?

This month I’m going for a Danish book. Now it’s a bit cheeky, since I’ve already read this one before, but it’ll be a nice reread.
We’ll be reading Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Mercy. The first book in the Department Q series. Now I’ve seen it elsewhere as Keeper of lost causes, but there may be a British title and an American title. Just a heads up. The Danish title is Kvinden i buret which means The Woman in the Cage.
Now this is one of my favourite genre of books. I love a good detective novel and tv show.
I hope you’ll have time to join in on the reading.

Long live Snowball

Hi Everyone, CstM here.
I hope you’re all doing well.
So last time in the Gloom Dog Book Club we were reading Animal Farm. Now that was an emotional roller coaster. I didn’t know much about it, besides the famous quote “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”
So I went into it thinking “Oh a book about pigs and farm animals, how bad can it be!”. Holy bejesus, that went dark really fast. The scene were Napoleon went all “Off with their heads” with the chickens. I did not see that coming! Or the part with the puppies, when they kick out snowball. Poor guy!
I really liked Snowball, maybe he just spoke to my Scandinavian mind. So I was getting really angry at Napoleon for how he treated Snowball. Although Squealer was the pig I mostly wanted to punch on the snout. He was just a massive, self serving twat, wasn’t he?
So yeah, I went into the book not really expecting much, but I ended up really enjoying it. I’m pretty happy with having read that.

Now this months book is going to be The Catcher in the Rye. Another book I just know by title but little else. I’m sure it’s been mentioned in crime dramas as a favourite amongst serial killers, but I’m not sure how much truth there is to that. The only thing I could find online, was that it was the book John Lennon’s killer was obsessed with.
So I hope you’ll join in on the reading adventure.

I was talking with David Davis, and I was mentioning how since I grew up in Denmark, I’ve mostly read the Danish and some Scandinavian classics.
Now I have a list of future picks for the Gloom Dog Book club, but I’d mostly gone for English/American literature. I want the book club to be easily accessible to everyone. Books you can just pick up from the library.
But I was wondering, if they’re available in a translated version would you guys be interested in me adding some Scandinavian books into the mix? Please let me know what you think.

We have finally been allowed to go inside people’s houses. It’s a brave new world. We actually get to socialise and not freeze our butts off. We’ve been to see the grandkids, which was really nice. They grow so big, so fast.

We’ve even had a week of pretty decent weather, so Gloom Dog and I have been spending time out in the sun, whilst the guinea pig have been roaming around in his outside enclosure. Even the garden pheasant has been more active, eating the droppings from the bird feeder and screaming the songs of his people. It could also be because I feed him bread scraps.

Reading for the soul

Hi everyone, CstM here.
So can we all agree that lockdown is starting to suck massive balls? I’m here panicking, trying to write a blog post, wondering how to act human, since the only socialisation I’ve had outside family and friends is the occasional visit to the pharmacy.

I’ve taken up bird watching. Or a more fitting description, I’ve started semi stalking the local pheasant and his wife. They come to the garden every day to eat the droppings from the bird feeder. We did have a quite fun sighting of a Great Spotted Woodpecker. Well I was there starring into the soul of this poor bird, wondering what the heck kind of bird he was and really, the bird just wanted a bit of privacy so he could eat.

Although it hasn’t all been bad. I’ve started and finished quite a few cross stitching projects and I’ve started a wall of cross stitch.

Well I was talking with Roob and Cade, over from Library of Libraries, and we were talking about how we’d like to read some more. I know I have a big list of books I’d like to read, but I’ve really fallen behind on my reading these past few years.
In an attempt to start reading more and just enjoy books with friends, we came up with the idea of starting a book club.

So I hereby introduce you all to Gloom Dog Book club.
The idea so far is that we’ll read one book a month. I’ll get on here and introduce the book and if you feel like reading along with us, that would be grand.
I have a whole list of upcoming book ideas, but if you have any suggestions feel free to drop it in the comments below.

The first book we’ll read is Animal Farm by George Orwell.

I hope you’ll consider joining us on our reading adventure.
Happy reading!

Extra number

Yes, this will be in bad taste, and I’m sorry if I trigger fellow peeps who’s gone through this, but in times like these where the world seems to be falling apart and people are screaming racism at fake tattoos I find that humour is your best friend. No matter how twisted. What’s it worth if you cannot laugh at it in the end?

So bringing out my competitive nature, Leggy dared me to make a version of White Christmas and here’s the verse I came up with.

So without further ado, White Christmas as song by Bill Cosby

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
One where she’s sleeping on dick
And she won’t remember
Our time together
Which means less in lawsuit fees

Koldskål!

I’ve been trying to radicalize Leggy to the ways of the Danes. This has included teaching him how to say bad words in Danish like “Røv”, “Knep” and more useful stuff like “Øl”. In the food department I started out slow with Danish meatballs (Frikadeller). We then moved up to Grønlangkål with ham and caramelized potatoes. Grønlangkål is kale that has been boiled for a few minutes, then chopped to death and in the end put in a cream heavy white sauce.

Yesterday we had that one summer day you seem to get in Scotland so my inner Dane came jumping out demanding koldskål. This is a slightly weird Danish dish that is traditionally eaten in the summer. Those warm nights where you don’t feel like playing Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen you can buy a carton of Koldskål, a bag of kammerjunker (a type of small, hard biscuits) and pop it in a bowl and dinner is ready.
Now you may be wondering what the heck is this weird Danish contraption that seems to only show up when it’s warm and has a name that literally means cold bowl? It’s is a cold soup made from buttermilk and other good stuff.

I personally can’t remember a summer at home where we haven’t eaten this stuff at least once. In my quest to tell Leggy about the gloriousness of this this food I wikkied it and apparently in the summer of 2013 Arla sold 3,8 million liters of this stuff. Which is rather impressive when you think about the fact that there’s only about 5,7 million Danes. That’s how popular this is.

Now I somewhat naively figured that since I couldn’t buy the ready made variant here that I’d make it myself. I pulled out my trusty Frøken Jensens kogebog (Miss Jensen’s cookbook a treasure trove of Danish recipes) and thought that looks simple enough. That was until I casually mentioned to Leggy that I’d need to get Ymer at the next shopping trip. Clearly the Scots doesn’t have the same appreciation of the finer nuances of dairy because all I got was a blank look and a “Bless you”. My description of, it’s somewhere between yogurt and A-38 wasn’t much help either. Back to wikki!

Then came challenge number two. The recipe called for pasteurized egg yolks. I cornered an unsuspecting Tesco worker, which these days is getting harder and harder. I suspect I’ve worked up a reputation for being the one who asks for all the weird things they’ve never heard off, much less carry. First was the German nougat and cardamon powder for Christmas biscuits, then potato flour, a non modern can opener and now the pasteurized egg yolk. I could find pasteurized egg whites but no yolks.

In came the lovely RooBeeDoo with a link to a site on how to do it yourself. All you had to do was add lemon juice and water, microwave it and whisk it every once in a while. Sounded simple enough. Of course that went as wrong as it probably could go.

A call later to the mothership and I was using yogurt instead of ymer and used eggs that I had poured boiling water over in the hopes that I wouldn’t kill Leggy from exploding arse.
So if you want to try it out here’s the recipe

Koldskål

4 pasteurized egg yolks
6 tablespoons of sugar
8 dl Buttermilk
3 dl yogurt
The seeds from one vanilla pod

Whisk the sugar and egg yolk together until fluffy and airy.
Mix in the buttermilk, yogurt and vanilla seeds.
If you want you can even add a bit of lemon zest.
Leave in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Here served with strawberries

Flying polishes

CstM here for a short interlude.

A friend of mine in the nail polish community has started up an online petition, collecting signatures for the cause of getting the Civil Aviation Authorities to review their flight restrictions on nail polish.

Nail polish has been deemed a hazardous material thus you can’t send it out of the UK using Royal Mail. Inside the UK you can max send 3 polishes in a parcel and you have to get through a lot of faff of putting a huge sticker on it proclaiming that it contains nail polish. This is what she’ll try to get changed or at least get answers to why that is. I for one would be a bit more nervous of my “girl cave” that’s filled with bottles of nail polish, if they can suddenly combust or otherwise kill me.

So if you have the time and feel like supporting this endeavour you can sign the petition Here and you can also read more about the whole thing plus the questions that will be asked of the Civil Aviation Authority.

Short interlude

If you eat a pig, that has somehow eaten a human, would it count as second hand cannibalism?

And would fertilising greens with dead animals make the vegetables unsafe for vegetarians?

Days that change a life

Have you ever had one of those moments that seem to rock your whole foundation? Like that moment when you find out that your parents are really just people trying to do their best with what they have.They have flaws and can be broken like anyone else. That really took me by surprise.

Now what had my socks knocked off the other day was a scene from The Blacklist. I could fangirl for ages about the awesomeness that is this show, but this scene took it to a whole other level.

 

 

I am in no way a stranger to suicide, but still this perfect circle of death simile made me look at my own history and choices in a different way. Present self is now looking at past self thinking “How could  you?”
A week ago I would have said that trying to slice up my arms was my choice, it was my life and my body. But really no man is an island. We’re all connected to someone somehow like ripples in the water, we overlap and affect the lives around us. Like Newton’s third law; For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Just by living and being out there you are an action. You are creating waves. And someone will miss you. I promise you.
There is always another way out. Always!
And if you ever need a flashlight in the darkness I’m here waving my arms. My email address is in the contact page if it’s ever needed, contact me on twitter, hell send a carrier pigeon. If you need someone to talk to I am here.

 

They’re alive

The Mothership called at 9 in the morning the other day telling that her good friend from Sweden would be coming to visit. You know that friend who you used to play with naked in a paddling pool with as a toddler? Well this is his mum. So of course I had to come way earlier than planned to see them.The parental unit are going to Paris on holiday in two weeks so I was going here anyway to look after their pets. So I’ve been living of cafe Mothership freeing up money for more nail polish which isn’t bad.

The guests arrived yesterday and are leaving tomorrow. So Friday was the big cleaning day, getting everything tidied up and cleaned for the arrival. Also Papa J is watching all the Tour de France he can fit in between work and sleep so mum is going crazy already. She’s apparently done a ton of laundry.
We did make muffins for the guests, two portions as someone doesn’t like banana muffins.We also did the big Sunday roast thing which was really good. There was of course the roast, pork, then oven baked potatoes, boiled carrots (raw ones for someone..), boiled pointed cabbage in a white sauce and garlic bread.
Even Ingeborg, the hedgehog, ate some raw pointed cabbage.

Feast your eyes on the Mothership’s cooking

Today was bbq day. I am normally not the biggest fan of bbq or mosquito/bug meat as I call it but today’s menu was actually really good. Even though I had to peel all the potatoes, or most of them, for the potato salad. It was really good so I do it well.
Next year mum’s friend is turning 50 and her partner just told Papa J that he’s planning on proposing to her then so he asked Papa J if he would be his best man. This may be the event that finally gives mum the chance to see him in a suit. Stranger things has happened before.

Every year the village the parental has a yearly village celebration. Starting out with a big party Friday night and ending Sunday with a parade. Usually the village is divided into streets and there’s a big competition on who can make the most impressive wagon.  In the front is a marching band and the local moped club ends the show. The local line or western dancing club and the village’s local football club are also in the parade every year.
This year only two streets seemed to have participated though. So it was a shorter parade than normal but still a fun thing to watch. There was a wagon with a fishing theme and one with a troll theme.

Now the seeds seem to be doing very well so far. They’ve all started growing and I’ve already repotted three of them. The salad, cherry tomatoes and basil are now in bigger pots and the leek and aubergine are not far behind. I did seem to have over watered them at some point so I had to cut back on the watering for a while.
There started growing mould on the sides of the cardboard boxes which sent me into a right panic. I am very paranoid about mould. I took calming words from both Leggy and the Mothership to make me see that it wouldn’t effect the plants and there was no need to throw them out.

I hope you’re all enjoying the summer and if you meet mum’s friend then mum is the word.

Plants and feet

So I am trying something that could possibly just go wrong. I’ve planted seeds. Yes, you may ask “How can that be a fast car to death?”. Well let me tell you the story of the girl with the black thumb. Although I think they simply get into my house and decides to commit suicide. There may be a sign outside my door reading “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” only visible to plant life.
Now it’s not that I don’t try. I would at least get A for effort, not that it seems to make any difference on the longevity of the plant life spans. I may have killed off around 8 or so flowers and 3 cacti. We are over in serial killer material. In the beginning I started out naive, thinking it would be a long relationship and I’d have lots of greenery but after a while I had to realise that that won’t really happen on my own. I found a youtube clip with sounds of rain that I would play every time little planty was watered. That didn’t stop it from dying. Now I admit that the something violet plant’s death was sort of my fault. It had these really suspicious spots on the leaves and I got paranoid and may have cut off a big chunk of the leaves off. It didn’t survive. Then there was the one where the roots got mouldy, the ones that drowned, the ones that dried out and whatever else I put the poor plants through.
One of the local supermarket have been having a campaign where for every 50 kr spent in the shop you get a small planting kit for free. It contained a pot, earth, seeds and a plant marker. I got a kind of salad, leeks, cherry tomatoes, basil and aubergine kits so I figured since I already had them I may as well try and see if I can actually manage to make them grow. I figured we could make a series out of it. I personally suggest that you guys make some bets on who will survive and who will die first. It can be almost a Hunger Games for plants. Start out with 5 plants, who will survive to the end? Or will they all die gruesome deaths one by one?
If a kid can do this I’m sure I can find a way of screwing it up.

So today was planting day. Day 1 in operation plant!
Now already here I managed to get a bit confused. I hadn’t realised that the brown coin like thing was the earth so I had bought a big bag of it last time I went shopping. But apparently by adding some water the earth puffed up by magic and suddenly you had enough to fill up the cup. Now I must admit that this was pretty fun.

Besides playing with plants I’ve been cleaning and tiding up. The parental unit is visiting tomorrow. My washing machine has yet again decided it doesn’t want to work so Papa J will have to look at it.
Yesterday was a fun day even though it started way too early which in my world is before 7. But on the bright side it did mean I wasn’t woken up at 8 by the big machinery driving past the garden. The building is getting a new roof which isn’t bad but damn do they make a lot of noise. Best part will be when they sometime in November get around to changing all the windows. *Sigh*
I have a good friend who recently went through minor surgery, but since she’s allergic to most kinds of pain medicine she’s been on morphine. So yesterday whilst her husband was at work I came over to keep an eye on her. Now of course I brought along lots of sweets and crisps so she could wallow in her pain. We had a pretty good day together and it was the first time I had a nap outside home.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend